A Prettier Mask
DRACO
The candelabras lit themselves in sequence down the east corridor.
The chandeliers dropped an inch on their chains, just enough to brighten the light.
By seven, the floral arrangements had been placed, the mirrors polished, the bloodwine decanted into the crystal carafes that Elias kept locked in the cellar for occasions that required the suggestion of civility.
The wards had been checked twice. Rowan had checked them a third time because Rowan did not trust anything he had not personally verified, which was one of the many reasons I had kept him this long.
I was reviewing the guest manifest when Nico knocked on the study door.
He did not wait for an answer before opening it, which I had stopped commenting on. He came in with his hair still damp, wearing a dark grey shirt open at the collar, and he looked like a man who had been awake longer than sleep could fix.
He stopped in front of the desk.
“I want to ask you for something,” he said.
I set down the manifest. “Ask.”
“My friend, Evie. I want her at the ball tonight. I know it's a security issue. I know she's human and doesn't know the full picture and your entire guest list is probably a bite radius from a bloodbath. I know all of that. I'm asking anyway.”
I looked at him.
He was not going to break. Nico was constitutionally opposed to breaking in front of witnesses.
But he was close to the edge of what a person could carry quietly, and I could see it in the fine tension at the corners of his eyes.
He wanted one person in that room who belonged to him and the rest of the night would be mine.
I almost said no. Then I looked at the shadows under his eyes and understood that I did not want him broken. I wanted him worn down, yes, but shattered was a different.
A shattered Nico would give me nothing I actually wanted. He would comply. He would be quiet. He would stop pushing back with that infuriating attention he had.
I did not want any of that to stop.
“Mateo will collect her from the shop under full protection. She arrives with an escort and she leaves with one. She does not move through this house alone, and she does not speak to anyone I have not personally cleared.”
He blinked. “Is that a yes?”
“That is a yes with conditions.”
“I'll take it.” He exhaled. “Thank you.”
“Don't thank me. Go to your fitting.”
He turned toward the door and then paused. “For what it's worth, I know last night wasn't only about protocol.”
He left before I could respond to that. Then Amara walked in through the side entrance that connected to the east corridor, which meant she had been in the corridor long enough to hear at least the last of it.
“Sabine Cross,” she said, and put a file on the desk.
I pulled the file toward me. Inside were contract transcripts, transfer documents, and three signatures that Elias had flagged.
“How deep?” I said.
“Remy's debt was never a street-level accident.” Amara settled into the chair across from me.
“The original loan traced back to Moroz, yes, but Moroz does not architect multi-level transfer contracts. He sells blood and collects late payments. Somebody gave him the paperwork and told him where to point it.”
“Sabine gave him the paperwork.”
“Her signature is on two of the transfer clauses.” She tapped the relevant page.
“She has been building a debt chain. Moroz to Remy, Remy to the contract, the contract to Nico as the responsible guarantor, and Nico's threshold blood as the eventual collateral. She knew what she was buying before the ink dried.”
I closed the file.
Sabine was not a broker who wandered into situations. She was the kind of predator who identified a rare creature from three counties over and built a cage around it before the creature knew it existed. She had been doing it for four hundred years.
“The attack in the alley,” I said.
“Vane's enforcers,” Amara confirmed. “But the timing was not Vane's. He does not move that fast or that cleanly. He was given the location, the timing, and the window.”
“Sabine sold it to him.”
“I think she's running an auction, Draco. She's letting interested parties bid in action rather than currency. The first one to successfully extract him wins the contract.”
The fire in the study was not hot enough for the temperature I wanted in the room.
“The bloodstone,” I said carefully.
“I was waiting to see if you were going to tell me or if you were going to keep looking at his throat like a man trying to decide whether the thing he is seeing is real.” She tilted her head. “Is it real?”
“It is the same necklace, Amara and it should not be possible.”
“The pull, how bad is it?”
“It is getting worse. His blood was dormant and it is waking up. The bloodstone amplifies it. I can feel the resonance of it. I have not been within ten feet of him without my body making an argument I am actively ignoring.”
“Fate is not consent,” she said. “Grief is not proof. And hunger is not love just because it has learned a dead man's name.”
“I know that.”
“You have survived empires, Draco. Try surviving one human telling you no without turning it into a tragedy.”
“He has not told me no.”
“He has not told you yes, either. And he won't while he is living inside your house on your contract under your protection. You have constructed a situation in which his yes means nothing because he has no room to give you a no.” She held my eyes steadily. “Fix the room. Then ask.”
She rose, straightened her jacket, and walked back through the side door.
I had dressed in front of the same mirror for eighty years, and the mirror had developed opinions it expressed through the quality of the reflection, which tonight was brutally honest.
The coat was an old cut with modern tailoring, since Blackthorne had its own taste in fabric for me and I'd long stopped arguing with it. The cufflinks were older than the building and the signet went on last.
I looked at my reflection, and for one bad moment the mirror showed me what it had no business showing me.
The mirror showed me Cassiel laughing. He was laughing at me the way he had the night before the battle.
I pressed two fingers to the bridge of my nose and breathed through it. When I looked again the mirror showed me only myself.
I picked up the mask from the dressing table then left the room.
On my way to the ballroom I passed Nico's room, and through the door came a woman's voice.
“—and you look like you haven't slept in a week, Nicolás. Though that suit is extraordinary and I need to know who made it.”
“Ev, breathe—”
“I am breathing. I'm breathing and talking, I can do both, I went to college—”
“The suit's Draco's tailor.”
“Of course it is, it fits you like a religious experience and I'm furious about it—”
I almost smiled. I walked on before either of them caught me doing it.
Blackthorne's ballroom did not forgive architectural insecurity. The ceilings were the height of a church nave and the chandeliers were brutally present and the floor was old dark wood that had been walked on by things that were not human for the better part of its age, and it knew.
Every guest who entered felt it know. It was one of the reasons I held events here rather than at neutral venues.
The house was its own statement.
The vampire envoys from the Northeast houses came first.
Of course they did.
They arrived in dark silk and old jewelry. I gave them the proper deference. The correct titles. The exact inclination of my head. They wanted acknowledgment. They did not get ground.
The wolf pack alphas were easier. They respected directness, and directness cost me nothing. I spoke plainly. They listened plainly. No one pretended we liked one another more than we did, which made the exchange almost pleasant.
The coven leaders came next. They wanted to be seen speaking to me. That was the point of the conversation, so I let them have it. A few minutes at my side, a low word from me, the appearance of access. In rooms like this, being noticed was its own currency.
Then the fae patron appeared. He offered me a folded card between two fingers.
I took it and put it in my inner pocket without opening it. Fae gifts required privacy, witnesses, and a full legal team.
I was near the drinks table, listening to a ghoul financier explain a property acquisition in the Bronx that I would not be emotionally available for until Thursday, when the ballroom doors opened again and Nico walked in.
The suit was charcoal and it was tailored to him well. It sat across his shoulders exactly right. His mask was dark and close-fitting, and what it left uncovered was his mouth.
“You should see your face.”
The voice came from my left and I turned.
The warmth coming off her was not body heat. I had not felt it since the last time I had been within range of a phoenix.
“Evangeline,” I said.
“Evie,” she corrected pleasantly. “Only people I'm about to threaten get the full name.” She tilted her head. “Although technically we're doing both, so use whichever makes you comfortable.”
“You found him before I did.”
“Phoenix soul-sight. He lights up like a signal fire to anyone who knows what they're looking at. He did not know what he was. I decided that was his information to find out on his terms, not mine. So I stayed close and kept him breathing and waited to see who was eventually going to show up to complicate everything.”
“And now I have complicated everything.”
“Magnificently.” She looked at me. “He is not Cassiel.”
“I know what he is not,” I said.
“Make sure you remember that when he is standing close enough to bite.” She held the look for one more second.
“I like you, Drakhar. I have always found you more interesting than most of your kind. But if you cage him, if you let grief make the decisions, if you take one good thing he offers you and turn it into a debt, I will burn what you love. Slowly. And I will make sure you are alive and paying attention for all of it.”